<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>What We Learned From You by OpalEyes2112</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189704">What We Learned From You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalEyes2112/pseuds/OpalEyes2112'>OpalEyes2112</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales From The Vivarium [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Vivarium (Movie 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alien Abduction, Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Aliens, Attempted Murder, Bondage, F/M, Psychological Horror, Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:00:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,559</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26189704</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalEyes2112/pseuds/OpalEyes2112</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Gemma and Tom arrived at House Number 9 there was a couple who raised the boy who would become known by the unfortunate couple a year later as Martin.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin (Vivarium) &amp; Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales From The Vivarium [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What We Learned From You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The Muse caught me in their trap! I watched this movie (which is definitely not for everyone), and was almost immediately inspired. This one-shot was inspired by Martin and some aspects of his behaviour during his showing of House #9. I thought he looked like a kicked puppy when Gemma and Tom refused his gift of wine and strawberries. <br/>However, this fic is super-duper dark. <br/>  P.S This fic is un-betaed so if there any mistakes please point them out to me. This is my first Vivarium fanfic and honestly first fanfic for the movie on ao3 and thus, I would greatly appreciate feedback!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>   The boy stared at the body, formerly known as Richard Platterden, hanging from the ceiling fan. It bewildered him. He knew, objectively at least, that the humans were prone to committing suicide once they were in the Yonder. They had covered it in their third round of lessons: the effects being in the inter-dimensional neighborhood had on the human psyche.</p><p>
  <em>We’ve persuaded hundreds to come here. To raise us and learn from them, learn how they function. We keep trying and they keep killing themselves. Why?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>   We give them a home, a child, and healthy food. The yard and house are spacious by their standards. Unless…alcohol…is…also a necessity? For some of them? They have 1171635 varieties of it. Make a note to include to champagne with the welcome baskets in the future. But…there must be another reason. Or is that really it? What happened?</em>
</p><p>The boy’s mind then tumbled into an internal storm of back-and-forth debates based on his observations. Just this morning Richard had been smiling and even waved bye to him as the boy had left for his lessons. Perhaps his eyes had seemed unfocused, but a human smiling meant that they were happy. <em>Correct? Correct?! Smiling does mean happy, satisfied, content, and all the emotions that seem opposite to…this. </em></p><p>He fumbled to grasp why a happy human would also be a suicidal one and was <em>definitely </em>failing to interpret the expressions on the face of the woman perched on the edge of the bed. Katie Platterden’s eyes were scarlet from the increase of pressure in the blood veins of her eyes indicating grief, yet her knuckles were white as her hands twisted in the sheets. Her normally braided hair fell free in layers of she’d once described as coppery.</p><p>     It wasn’t any of these things though that told something had been “knocked loose” in Katie. It was something…different. If the surveillance report was accurate, she’d found him 56 minutes ago and hadn’t stopped staring at her departed husband. Yet, she now stared at him with something going on with her eyes and clenched teeth. An almost extinct instinct told him she was waiting for something, however Katie also seemed to be restraining herself. It was very…odd.</p><p>   <em>I should go and get a body case for Father. </em>A sense of wistfulness unexpectedly filled him; he’d actually gotten along with his male parent. Richard had played games with him when he’d been younger, but Katie…Katie never did. <em>It’s time to release Father. </em></p><p>The boy turned his gaze upward to see if he would be able to untie the knot holding Richard’s scarf to the fan without any additional tools. Noting that it would require at least a pair of scissors the perfectly assembled teenager afforded himself one more glance at his grieving mother before departing.</p><p>   His pace down the stairs and out of the house was perfect in a mechanical sense. The black-haired boy been trained in the art of presentation under the ever-present and watchful gazes of the leaders and he was (to use human slang) going to be damned if he decided to be sloppy now. Humans didn’t like sloppiness and it certainly wouldn’t be appreciated once he was the face of Yonder.</p><p>     With a glance over his shoulder to check if Katie had trailed him the pristine boy had allowed himself a short sigh before lifting a section of the pavement. Slipping underneath it, he proceeded four paces to the luminescent blue vortex that solidified under his touch into a door with a handle. Pushing it down, he entered the Domain to procure a body case for his departed Father and notify them of the release.</p><p> </p><p>   Three hours later, the boy returned with a body case with was laid with a quiet reverence under the corpse. During his absence Katie had cleaned up; if he hadn’t smelled the water still dripping in the shower her appearance would’ve given him a hint.</p><p>   He swept his bemusement at the change away to turn his focus on getting Father down. It was surprisingly quick work; four snips with the scissors and Richard fell neatly on top of the bag. From there it was a simple matter of zipping him up, sucking the air out, then dragging him down the stairs for someone from Support to pick him up.</p><p>  Once he set Richard’s shell down in the middle of the road a thought lit up.</p><p>  <em>Katie’s not here. She’s not exhibiting behaviour considered the average based on the total of previous observations. Most human spouses trail after the shells of their former loved ones as if they’re magnets, but Katie isn’t doing that. She didn’t even watch me leave with the relic. </em></p><p>Then another thought, one that disturbed him more than the previous one rose.</p><p>  <em>Katie’s behavior is several deviations from the mean. </em></p><p>  What further cemented that idea was finding her in his bedroom with a scarf he didn’t remember. Probably wore it before she arrived in Yonder. Except she wasn’t wearing it now; the orange cloth was being twirled in between her fingers. Then it got even more strange; for the first time in 2 weeks Katie smiled when she saw him watching her.</p><p>  “You like…learning things right?” Her voice rose and fell in a stilted manner. Her lips twitched like her facial muscles weren’t used to the exercise.</p><p>  “Yes.”</p><p>  “Would you like to learn how humans can be intimate?” Katie’s voice dropped an octave as the boy processed what she was asking. Seeing his confusion, she clarified. “In the bedroom? We have…. many ways to <em>spice up….</em> the act. I could show you some things.”</p><p>     <em>WHAT?! Why now? </em>The teen was glad his face was schooled into a mask of marble. The abruptness created a blossom of suspicion that battled with his curiousity.</p><p>  The suggestion provided a rare opportunity to learn about intercourse and the cultural aspects surrounding it. However, the boy wanted to know what prompted Katie’s offer. Her husband had just been released and their records showed it was rare for humans to engage in coitus in times of deep stress. Katie was in stress no matter how hard she wanted to hide it.</p><p>  <em>Still… </em>The boy shrugged like he’d seen Father do at times.</p><p> “Yes. I would like to learn on how humans spice things up.”</p><p>  Katie nodded and her pink lips curled in a way that seemed more animalistic than before.</p><p>  “Alright…lay down on the bed.”</p><p>  “Pardon?”</p><p>   “Lay down on the bed and just…stay still.”</p><p>   The jet-black haired boy strode over then reclined on the bed. Katie’s eyes roamed over his form then her teeth gritted against each other. In the next moment, she bursted into a frenzy of motion tying his hands together with the orange wool then used the rest of the length to bind his hands to a bed post.</p><p>   “How are you feeling?” The question came out in something akin to a hiss and the boy noticed that her skin was taking on a red hue.</p><p>  “Fine.”</p><p>   “Really?”</p><p>  The boy tilted his head to stare at her as her hand went for something behind her back.</p><p>  “Yes.”</p><p>   “How about NOW?!” In one second Katie had pulled something behind her back and plunged into the upper-left section of his torso.</p><p>   A sharp, yet explosive pain turned his nerves into a firestorm for what seemed like an endless moment. The bulges on either side of his throat expanded letting out a pitiful noise ripped out of him by the excruciating pain. On the horizons of the boy’s awareness he knew that it was the scissors he’d used to cut the knot from earlier now buried in his chest and Katie’s eyes were gleaming with satisfaction.</p><p>    Betrayal felt like it was going to permanently damage some key organ in his body as he realized that Mother had stabbed in the place where she believed he had a heart. Luckily for him the place she’d hit was actually void of any necessary organs. Pulling back the pain the boy managed to loosen the knot around his wrists enough to free them.</p><p>  Springing off of the bed the jet-haired teen pressed his left hand to the wound to speed up the healing. Ignoring the human woman’s open mouth at the agility of his departure the teen fled the house and returned to the space underneath the pavement. Beneath his fingers the flow of blood was already decreasing, but the pain of the betrayal wasn’t.</p><p>  It’d come as a surprise. He wasn’t sure why it should since their observations had showed humans to be an incredibly violent lot, but Richard had actually been benevolent, and Katie-Katie had never hurt him physically before. It twisted like the scissors could’ve, but the pain wasn’t physical so much as something else.</p><p>    The boy shook his head as he realized that Katie’s attack would mean that he could take over as the new Martin sooner rather than later. <em>Katie…Mother….</em></p><p>  She had been right though-he had learned something new today. Humans could be far more manipulative than they gave them credit for, and they were very chaotic.</p><p>   <em>Tip for the future generations: always be cautious around your Parents. It’s quite possible that when they seem like they’ll help you that they will actually try to kill you instead. </em></p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>